


Testimonial's To Casse

by wanderlustlover



Series: My Dark Angel [1]
Category: X-Men
Genre: General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-03 01:41:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>She's neither Common People, nor X-Men, but knows both. These are people about her.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Black Angel of God

**Author's Note:**

> She's neither Common People, nor X-Men, but knows both. These are people about her.

My name is Anna Rodriguez and I live in Rosa, Mexico. I am ninety-seven years old and if it weren't for the fact I were to die in the near future I would not be relating this momentous story.

The future and the past blur in my mind, more so as I age by the years. Faces blur together, so that my nurses are so many bothering me and yet only one, and my children are one child whining for things of no purpose. My children have forgotten in the technological world of darkness and deceit that love still exist, and faith, too.

But I know so, and this-

This is MY story.

My life hasn't always been as easy as my children think it was. There were times, they'd refer to as the Modern Dark Ages, when life was down right labor to simply struggle from one day to the next. I remember day where there was no food, and nights when a single sound would bring your full family to huddle in the corner of a closed in room, hoping you weren't the one they were searching for.

I remember the trivial joys from my childhood in romance pamphlets my father referred to as "girly comics" and dolls with figures I now know are unrealatisic, through which I could live my days in laughs and small smiles.

I remember teenage romance, with luster and excitement. I remember happiness, and faith in the common good. I remember Truth and Justice. I remember Super Heroes. When they fought for us, not when they were the ones who held us captive to our own planet. They taught the world hope.

But hope comes in many forms and fashions.

My grandmother Annetta Rodriguez, from whom I was given my name, believed most prominently in god, and his heavenly accord. She tried to instill in me a love and duty of religion from the youngest age where I could muster an understanding of her words.

Sometimes I wish I had listened closer before my incident.. I wish my son had been old enough to remember. She would have changed his life, too. Maybe then his life would be cleaner, he would have lived longer. That incident rewrote my whole life, my entire dedication to HIM

My first child as named Roberto, and he had cancer from birth till the age of three and a half. The doctors said it was only a medical phenomenon, but I know the truth whether anyone believes me or not. She was real. She was completely one hundred percent real, but I can't begin here. Can I?

In the third year of my son's life, the cancers took over him all but completely. We were what I would prefer to call penny pincher's with too much back bone, while others would call me and my family, poor, and too snobbish to except well fare. I would give up the breath in my chest before I admitted I needed pity for my family. I was a strong, willful woman.

I could not save my son though, so I went to the doctors. The doctors told me they could do little themselves. Radiation treatment, surgery, nothing changed his slim chances to survive till his fourth birthday. All I could do was wait and watch till he would pass away, cursing the doctors, and praying to god, that I would do anything should he save my baby, my child, for what had my child, my blessed little one, done to deserve this slander?

But the days pass, and the nights dragged on as I sat by his bed side listening to breaths in his chest grow shorter and shorter, my tears failing me now. What had I done to deserve this? Had I not been devote enough?

And one night, while I was holding his hand, telling him the story of the Saint Maria, he breathing stop all together. I started crying, swearing to god things I can not repeat to this day, for I will not utter such words to god ever again.

Then she appeared. I don't remember how I knew she was there. I just knew. I was bawling over my son, who's breathing had stopped seconds earlier, and then I turned to look up and there she was. Standing at the end of his bed, her eyes, full of what I thought to be tears, fixed on my child.

I flew into a rage, and lunged at her, cursing her, cursing her god, only to find myself falling through the air where she had been. I collected myself looking up to see her by the side of his bed, but this time I could not breathe to utter a word at her, something in her demeanor, something in her beauty, caught me and held me captive.

Her eyes were the deepest blue, her hair the darkest black, and her skin the palest white rose I have ever laid to me eyes and this did not begin to illuminate the woman who was bent over my sons bed. Her position crouched her so that, this board onyx black feathered wings, covered her entire clothing, leaving her face only visible.

I, like most of the rest of the world, had never seen an angel. I was brought up to know angel were of joy, and hope. How could this person, this thing, be an angel? Her eyes were filled with pain, as if her each step was on top of blades, and her expression drawn as if examining a mathematics problem and not my child.

She stood, as I stumbled towards her, and her eyes seem to trace my face in the same emotionless way. I wanted to curse her, to shout that she was from the devil and I would allow her to stay in my house no longer. I tried to say some words, but the blubbered from my lips, while the tears scorched my cheeks, as my eyes looked over her.

It was a tunic of white silk, that seemed to be the exact color of her skin, tied at the waist white a rope woven in gold, the covered her form around those larger than life wings. The tunic fell to middle of her calves, and she had no shoes at all, only bare feet, same as the rest of her body.

Her hand reached out to me and stiffened as if she might burn me with her touch. A single finger of hers touched me. Her finger traced a tear falling down my cheek, and I watched at the same moment a tear fall down hers. It was the dark red of blood, and it fell along her cheek, until it fell off and ruined the white gown, causing a drip mark.

Her eyes seemed to be confused as the tear fell from her cheek. She might have been a child in herself. But how could this grown woman, this ethereal being, be anything like a child? She was supposed to be an emissary of hope, the embodiment of love! She was supposed to stop the things like this that happened to the good people. How could she be a child???

Tears renewed coursed with fury as she turned back to my child. She leaned over his and placed a hand on his forehead. An illumination of the brightest almost sky blue came from beneath her hand and flowed the length of my child's body. A moment later he convulsed and she stepped back. I ran to my child, as he coughed, and gagged on the floor next to me.

He breathed, and looked at me dazed, with the lightest smile, a child's smiles, the one they all have when that young, and slipped back into sleep. But somehow I knew it. It was just sleep as I listened to his slow breathing.

I looked over my shoulder to her. She was holding her hand, and the inside of the hand that had been on his forehead looked burned. And her face was now covered with rivulets of blood that seemed to have flown from her eyes, to drip more on her dress. Were those her tears?

I watched as she looked off to her side. She nodded to some being I could not see or feel and moved in the direction she'd looked.

'Wait.' I cried out. 'Angel, please.'

She turned and looked at me with those child's eyes, the eyes of a woman hardened by time, a grandparent left alone for all time. I realized then she had the wait of the world on her shoulder's. She looked like a mother to me then suddenly. For all I know she could be the embodiment of all mothers.

'Leave me with something.' I pleaded. 'A name that I could pray to you by. Someone to glorify to his generosity. This is all I ask of you. Angel, please, grant me this thing.'

She looked around my house and I felt shame flood my body, at my poor attempt at a shack, until her eyes seemed to darken on me and for a moment I wondered if she even understood the words that came form my mouth. She reached out and her finger crossed the skin over my forehead gently, and I could have sworn her lips almost tried to smile, though her eyes looked even more troubled.

'Worship….' Her hand moved to over my heart and I remember thinking her voice sound like the wind during the calmest, darkest part of the night. "Mother. Where is the heart."

Her hand, her fingers, closed together over mine, pulling my hand closer to herself now. 'Not angel.'

Her hand placed mind over where her heart would be, and I could feel her heart beat. I remember thinking myself insane suddenly for thinking an angel wouldn't have a heartbeat or everything normal a person would. Why wouldn't they?

'Casse.'

Off to her side she looked again and she let go of my hand, and her wings open wide. I was just amazed at the glory of the span when a bright light emerged from her like a beacon and suddenly she was gone, only small black feather falling through the air left in her wake. I went to catch a feather in my hand and realized something had been left in it.

An object, flimsy, wrapped in folded cloth. I sunk to my feather near the feathers opening it. My eyes widened, and silent, jubilant tears of freedom, of thanks giving, flooded my cheeks a new. In my hand, the hand she had only minutes ago left go of lay, a full stack of hundred dollar bills on blood stained white cloth.

I'll never forget her, though no one believes me. And even though my son thinks I'm insane to mummer things about a black winged angel of the lord, now that I'm so old, but I'll believe in her till the moment I die. An angel, of love and hurt, of pain and of healing. Angel Casse, my child's savior, the savior of my religious side.

Dear Lord, deliver me from my worldly sins. Then when I see the pearly gates, promise me I can place a kiss on the Angel Casse's cheek, because she renewed in me all that was good, and just, and hopeful. And let me see with joy that hope will always live in the eyes of your angels, where fears of man can not penetrate and love will always exist.

Amen.

&lt;no tags


	2. T2 Chance Is Always There

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where: No Idea

"Testimonial #2: Chance is Always There"

Where: No Idea

When: No Idea

Who: NPC...personal pgc, not for a large use at all, or by any without request. Just for the post.

No one knows my story. No one's ever really heard it enough to realize they could listen. It's a song on the wind. The melody that seems to evade your mind even though it's on the tip of your tongue and is just outside your reach.

I'm ages old. And yet I was born a second ago. I am as strong as the wind. As breakable as the water. I am all that embodies Chance, and all that is the day, the moments you can change your life and remake you. I, Barakeil, Chance, The Choice of Chance, choose when to speak and when to give the chance again. And yet always.

But maybe that's all I am. Or perhaps all I was supposed to be.

Maybe that’s why my story seems to start with that fateful day. A day like every other up here. It's was bright outside, white; music ethereal, the sighs of joy and the peace wafted like a heavy scent of pure ecstatic joy.

It was a day like any other. And she- she was just like all the others like her.

A sinner. A major. All defiance and anger trapped in a small corporeal form. Taken from the world because the Arc's were worried for what they saw her do, and saw her potential to do.

Her. Ah, how do I start with her? She has beauty, very beautiful, yes. But we…our kind, can't be fooled and tricked with the outer beauty so much. But she is beautiful. More beautiful than many I ever met, and there are so many. It being only one of the reasons why she is the one out of millions who I follow wherever, whenever, try to help.

She was -is- a child, and a bitch. She a temptress, and frightened little girl. A playful tease, and a hard minded tactician. She is a warrior, and a lover. A poet, and a killer. She could amaze you with a simple word, a slight of her hand, or kill you in less three seconds.

So of course, she was as she was then. And I hated her. She was all I despised. Someone who sucked life, smothered the breath out of hearts and gorged themselves in the blood of innocence.

It was even, almost fair, in a sardonic way. We hated her. She hated HIM, and us.

She is still a child to me. And yet she is a Goddess. My dearest and most loved Lord, absolve me of that thought. She carries herself through life like she is. But she is flawed, yet always trying, and maybe, just maybe, that's what makes her perfection.

Ahh. Little killer in her silks and leathers then, and again when weaves her wills, so different the next morning from the life she remembered. One night a haunted and hungry whore for some man with power and money, who would have been wrapped around her finger within that week and the next morning an enlightened and shunned member of the Heavenly accord. Not by her choice, mind you. By HIS...or by the Arc's.

And shunned for her given appearance. The black wings. The forsaken. The unforgiven. And I? Her watcher of course. Well not hers specifically. I got them all when they came. She would get the same chance they all got. It had been long whispered she was simply dead now as she'd been alive. Just dead in a living body.

And yet now to think...if they could only see her smile, or hear her true laugh, see the tears of pain and the sound of her anguish when she actually let go. If they ever got a chance to see the real her. It is love. In a fashion. She is the unattainable. One not of us, and not of them. She isn't anything anyone's truly ready for and she's never really been ready to live or smart enough not to just leap in completely and loose herself.

It was months before we had a real conversation. I barely said a word to her for that long. She deserved as such till she could prove atleast a wit that wasn't brash or stupid. They all did. Or so I had figured then. Maybe I've just gotten soft because I've seen worse and know that they still can't come close. They wouldn't know how.

Her name is Casse...but few ever live to know her long enough to touch the true Casse. She introduces them to the masks.

Riven..the thief. Smart little girl. Electrical, technology, hacker. Knows her way around your gun, like she does your body. Wants to break you in two. Hates the words 'commit' and 'exclusive' but wants you to rock her world till the sun comes up, and you realize she's given you the slip and the night of your life. You could never forget her.

Tandy...ah, so few and so many saw this face. Beautiful child, and teacher. Peaceful as the bending grass in the sway of the wind. Tempered. Compassionate to no fault. Easy to get along with. Willing to give you space and time to blossom. Pushes you for your full potential with soft hands and a warm heart. You love her.

SpellSong...She knew everything you couldn't conceive of. She spoke of God, and the Endless, as if they were children each. To her you're nothing if you can't help her, or she can't step on you. She can hide from you, make do whatever she wants you to do with a touch or the sound of her voice. She hates distraction, and adores her thrill, even at the cost of your life. You want hate her.

HeartAche...Child in tears, with your life in her fingers. She comes close to the quick, but no longer can make the kill. She chokes, and she hurts you for her choke, even while she does worse to herself inside. She tosses you out a window, waiting for you to beg back. Accepting you in a moment, for something that resembles safe or something that resembles love and need. She is shattered. Wants you to bleed, to cry for her. Maybe she needs you to because she can't. You don't know, but you want to save her.

SpellSong, revisited...a killer in a petticoat, and a little of everyone you adore.* She was a drink of water to you standing in a dessert you haven't realized. So jaded, and so in need, without showing. So beautiful, and dying on the inside. She'd kill you for looking at her wrong, and love you just for hating her. So twisted by time and tide, searching for the way to make it right. To make herself right. Fighting to break the pattern…..fighting to free herself at your expense. You want her dead.

I've seen them all, watched her grow, die, be reborn, resurface. I've watched her take pride in killing new born babies, and cry at the death of a child who never was. I've watched her find peace, and have it torn from her so fast she lost ever ounce it had given her, even her sanity.

I love her.

She is my bane. My child. The one I will watch over till time is done, or she gone. Whichever come first.

I do not look to her death, even though I could see it if I wished.

But I will watch over this beautiful, half-angel, lost child, till the moon sets in her eyes, and her heart fills in like the sea. And when she finds peace, there will be like none have ever seen. And maybe then I will rest to find another who needs of me more than see...when Casse sees peace. If Casse sees peace.

When she cane pick up the pieces of the deaths of mother, sister, extended family, son...and the heart break of father, brother and lover...and forgive herself the trespasses she takes of those and, more deeply, of herself.

When I find that pure joy in her as was when she was young, or the deep contentment in her I saw in Japan and the true peace when she understood the music of Heaven.

Until that day..I'll be the angel on her shoulder, for all that that implies of a woman-child so hell bent, helping her try to see the light, giving her the whisperings of the truth of the love she won't let herself have in her life again.

From this day...until till that last.

For I am all that embodies Chance, and all that is the day, the moments you can change your life and remake you. I, Barakeil, Chance, The Choice of Chance, choose when to speak and when to give the chance again. And yet always.

I give her that chance, which will always be out held, till the day she might see...she is not so lost as she is to herself, and thinks she is to her world and all she still holds with love. She still has a chance.

&lt;no tags.....just a testimonial

* - a line from "Baby June", SIP, Terry Moore


	3. T3 Did I love SpellSong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse me. You'll have to give a moment to stop laughing.

Did I love, SpellSong?

Excuse me. You'll have to give a moment to stop laughing.

Did I love, SpellSong?

Of course I loved Riven, and SpellSong and the Silver Queen of Eden.

But that was never enough for her. You had to hate her, too. Either that or you weren't good enough. You were just playing a game if you didn't hate her. Then you were just dead in her eyes, if she wasn't done with your body by then as it was.

Quick killer that one.

I'm not sure even she has her tally. The girl could probably just burn the world up if she wanted. Can't say I'm surprised knowing who's seeds she comes from. She like to be a bomb when she finally decides to go off.

The hospital? The earth quake? Buildings?

Are you kidding those things barely take anything out of her. According to calculation by three people it would take her between 12 and 14 minutes to destroy the entire planet Earth if that was her wish. She could be god. Goddess, excuse me. Except she'd never take it. She searches for something, that one. She always has, always will. And she'll run form it when she finds it.

But she searches.

If you know her, you can see it on first sight.

I saw it.

Praise Hecate, she was a vision that first day. A child with a blade of steel, covered in dust and grit, her eyes dark with intent. Her hair bound behind her and those clothes that clung and swum around her body in just the right places. So a child, and so much the woman waiting to be born from that child. And I'll never forget the sound her backbone made when it snapped, or the sound of her body slamming into the ground, her breath caught in her chest.

Free.

She died there. Atleast I think she did. She won't really tell me if she did. But I swear I heard her last heart beat, or atleast I thought I did. And how she awoke, eyes fogged with confusion and rest, except they glowed now, a different color than they had been on the field. Incased in the blue field was her skin, and she attracted and repulsed. I was a monster in her eyes. If only she knew what she'd become. I was a kitten in comparison.

But wasn't that what I always was for her?

Oh, she ran. But never hard enough, never far enough. She had trapped me with the first breath she'd taken walking out of that gate. I was the bastard in her eyes. She was free if she could just kill me. She'd be free. Be able to keep her knowledge, weapons, and friends. Her life. Her lost and innocent being inside that had been so raped. Yes, raped. I doubt she'll repeat that word to anyone.

I think she's closed off the world of her life before when she passed for dead on the battle ground in Valhallara and awoke in my room. Not her mothers death, or her birthday, her family, her brother or her father. The rape incident. The time when she found her aunt and uncle dead even though they'd tucked her in and kissed her forehead the night before.

I suppose she felt she deserved what the sailors did...and the training she went through at Valhallara. She's never answered me save a look when I asked if the reason she truly came to that place was to die and those eyes, those dark beautiful eyes, I know. She'll lie to a priest even, but she can't lie to me. She simply wanted to be next, to have her turn when the pain stopped. Everyone had been stripped away from her life, and all she wanted....all this poor, pain plagued, quiet child wanted was her turn to not feel the hurt anymore.

Oh, I did her a good service. I ripped her pity party from herself, like I would do so many of her safe holds.

Then I forged for her a New World. This open ground for her to learn on. Riven, beautiful Riven...she would have been like a daughter, but things just never stayed that way. She went in and out of my jobs, my council -though she rarely listened to me-, and my life for a few years. Wiser than her years, she seems so old when you speak to the real mind and heart under all that glamour and heartlessness.

And when you get there.....you're supposed to hold on as tight as you can, because no one is there. Save a small lonely child seeking the release from pain still. Patric, her brother, couldn't. Nor could her sister or her lover, that stupid Cajun. She gave him years and he still left her fly away.

And me? I could never cage her. She caged me....with that first breath. The first time I heard her, saw her smile....watched tears trickle down her face slowly as she cried out in anguish against the world. I would never hold her where she didn't want to be, never force her to do something she wouldn't like to. I taught her everything she wanted.....from stealing to killing and to worse, surviving that way for long periods of time. Years.

Like she trusts me. She has need of me sometimes, my gifts for her.

But she trusts no one for long. She entrusted herself to three men in her life, and they all couldn't save her from herself. And we all three know that in our own ways we have failed her, as does she in her heart feel we have failed her by not being able to heal all the hurts that hide.

Patric, who couldn't love her beyond that of a brother. Remy, who couldn't see beyond telling her she could be redeemed and deserved love. And me....who couldn't get beyond that second true fight we had and the moment she turned away out of hurt and anger.

Riven was never taught forgiveness...but somehow SpellSong was. Riven never knew it, never thought about it and never needed it. SpellSong hung in the balance judging you on if you were worthy. I don't know what changed her in those years. They claimed her dead at the beginning of a trio of years.....and later after that trio I saw her again.

She was different. Yes, beautiful and deadly, with a grace in stilled in her that I had never seen in all the years I had known her. Suddenly there this woman who would contemplate life and love and kill without a seconds hesitation, and then stood there looking like she regretted it. Who had taught her to regret? For it surely wasn't I.

To regret, to forgive, to flee instead of fight. These things she showed suddenly when I saw her again. She won't tell me what happened to teach her these things, though I asked a multitude of time while we lived in Eden together as friends or lovers or allies or enemies as time would give us. She never said, rather than respond she usually left my presence and in the later years ignored me.

The most I ever learned was she went away. On a long trip, far, far away. And she only told me this when she became obsessed with retrieving a special book. She'd accept no company to retrieve it, saying this was her job.....duty....giri. Where had my child lover who ran around laughing at death and provoking the world gone?

And how was this new person just as beguiling, just as intriguing and intoxicating?

I'll never know. She's never talking about it with me or anywhere within my hearing.

But yes.....yes, I do love, Casse.

And I did kill the sailors though she knows it not.


End file.
